It was one of the most difficult Thursday mornings of my life. I was supposed to be eating an Apple Pecan Waffle at Tandem with my friend Kara. Instead, I was in our bedroom having an intense conversation with TJ about whether we should go get our family tested for Covid. I had been in denial about Bauer’s symptom of no taste and no smell for a solid week prior to having this symptom for myself. Now my coffee had no taste and I couldn’t smell the bacon cooking for the kids.

This was two weeks ago, and we were at the start of the kids’ Fall Break from school. We had plans to drive to the playground at Flat Rock that Thursday afternoon. Story’s friend Laney was supposed  to spend part of the day with us and go to Flat Rock, which would include ninety minutes in the van together, not wearing masks and not social distanced. These plans involving someone else’s child forced me to make a decision I might not otherwise have made that Thursday morning. I wanted to believe I was just experiencing cold symptoms and I’d be fine in a day or two, but I knew that the loss of taste and smell was an acute Covid symptom. If I admitted such, it would mean no friend over and so much more.

There were so many things to lose. Cash’s soccer season would end prematurely. The kids would not be allowed to return to school for a few weeks. I would have to tell people I had been around that I may have exposed them to the virus. I would have to give up my alone time on the days the kids would normally be at school. I would not be able to shop for groceries or meet friends at Tandem. I would be controlled by something outside myself, and I could no longer believe or act as if the rules don’t apply to me.

That morning as TJ and I discussed what to do, I was mostly thinking of what would be lost. I wasn’t ready to give up any of these things, but whether I got a Covid test to confirm the sickness or not, I knew I had Covid. Was Lori Gottlieb right to say in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: “Not speaking about something doesn’t make it less real. It makes it scarier”?  Was James right when he wrote in the Bible that “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin”? Was Mr. Rogers right that “Anything mentionable is manageable”? Was Alexander McCall Smith right that “Hard choices are sometimes less hard than we think”?

The choice felt painfully hard, yet painfully important that Thursday morning. I am still recovering from the choice, as my kids are still missing out on school and I am still missing out on my alone time. I have yet to receive the gift of my taste and smell back after more than a dozen days of not tasting my coffee and not even bothering to drink wine. I can’t smell the lavender in my Epsom baths. I can’t smell my omelet cooking. I can’t smell Sailor’s lovey. I can’t smell the coffee brewing. I can’t smell the firepit. It is a severe and bizarre symptom, and as our priest said so perfectly on Sunday, I continue to live “between memory and hope.” 

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that “It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.” I have learned that I can keep eating even when I can’t taste. I can keep taking baths even when I can’t smell. I can keep living even when I can’t go to Tandem. I wait, and then I wait some more. I don’t like these struggles, but I know they are changing me in ways I could not otherwise be changed.

So what helped me make the decision on that very difficult Thursday morning to go get tested? As I’ve processed through the decision the past couple weeks, I have realized it came down to two things for me: What kind of person am I? and Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

First, what kind of person am I? Authenticity is a big part of my identity. I want to be able to be honest and open with others. I had not been able to do that for a whole week about Bauer’s loss of taste and smell. I hadn’t felt the urgency because Bauer is home for school this year and isn’t around others, and I was in denial that Covid had come to our family. But now that I had the symptom, I was going to have to admit it or else choose inauthenticity. Additionally, I had signed an agreement with the kids’ school at the start of the school year that I would not send my kids to school if any one of us was experiencing an acute symptom of Covid. I didn’t do that when Bauer had his symptom, but I knew that to move forward authentically, I would have to do it now. In hindsight, I can see that hiding and keeping secrets is not a way to live authentically or in community. I was going to have to keep people out or let people in. It couldn’t be both.  

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis also wrote that “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature….Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” Lewis goes on to talk about “the little mark on the soul” that results from our decisions, and I was feeling the weight of this “mark” as I pondered What kind of person am I?

Second, the verse from James was the final tipping point for me in those agonizing last moments of decision. Because of how spontaneously those words of Scripture came into my mind during my conversation with TJ, it seemed to have been from the Holy Spirit who helps us in our moments of weakness. It felt like such a clear and specific and obvious directive that to know what is right and not do it would be the wrong thing.

I shared the verse with TJ and said, “I have to cancel Laney and we have to get tested.” He supported me entirely. I left our room, went down the stairs, and began to do the next right thing. l picked up the “thousand-pound phone” as Anne Lamott would say and called my friend Mimi a mere twenty minutes before we were to pick up Laney for the day. I made the words come out: I have a Covid symptom so I need to get tested.

The next few hours were spent figuring out where and how to get our family tested, working out insurance issues, and telling the people who needed to know: some for school purposes (How long does the Covid flowchart say my kids will need to stay home?), some for exposure purposes (Who was I last in close contact with?), and some for support purposes (Who is the community who will love us and encourage us and pray for us?). 

Our friends jumped to help us. I was blown away by the immediate kindness and support that we received from so many people. More than a dozen friends offered to bring meals, to pick up groceries, or to run other errands. I made a list on a sticky note to keep up with all the people offering practical help so I would know who to turn to. The teachers at the kids’ school have been extremely supportive and willing to work with us to keep the kids caught up on the things they are missing during their absence.  This experience of other people going out of their way to help us has screamed in the face of the core lie I have battled since childhood: You are on your own. But my friends have shown me I am not on my own. I have been prayed for, cared for, provided for, checked on, and re-checked on.

Our friends Kara and Charles dropped off a box of flowers, cinnamon rolls, and acorn squash the very morning after I tested positive for the virus. You have to understand that acorn squash are to me what cinnamon rolls are to TJ. We have never felt more known and loved than in those initial moments of compassion and thoughtfulness. Over the next week and a half, we received Sarah’s lasagna, Ashley’s shredded beef tacos, Rebekah’s pork chops and mashed potatoes (Note: Mashed potatoes are to TJ what cinnamon rolls are to TJ, so I texted Bekah to say “TJ has died and gone to heaven”), Natalee’s roasted chicken and leek soup, Kara’s turmeric “Get Well” soup, Tropical Grille from Kristy, TruBroth bone broth from Marianne, Swamp Rabbit Cafe’s stecca bread, Great Harvest bread (including one vegan loaf for Bauer!), and groceries from Publix, Costco, and Aldi delivered by more friends!

When one friend’s meal arrived at our house, I literally stood in my kitchen with my mouth open in shock as TJ kept bringing more goodies inside. How can I have friends like this, and why are they this good to us? Even our kids have gotten to feel known and loved during this time of being away from their usual activities. Cash’s soccer buddies wrote him a note to tell him how the rest of the season went since he couldn’t be there, and Sailor’s friend from school sent her an “I miss you note” and some chocolate coins.

Nearly every friend who brought a meal included either salad or cut up veggies, a little thing that spoke my language loudly. Kara brought a whole gold package of Kerrygold butter in place of veggies, and that spoke my language just as loudly. I texted her right away to say, “I want to be like you because of how generous you are with the butter.”

How can butter mean so much? How can bone broth save your life? How can not tasting and not smelling make you more alive than ever? How can daily texts with my new friend Natalie feel like daily talks with God? How can seeing my sister show me around her new house on Marco Polo be like going on a little trip when I’ve been home so long? How can living between memory and hope be the exact place I am meant to be this October? How would I have known any of this without Covid?

What kind of person am I now? Well, I am a person who has survived Covid. I am a person who knows what it is like to not taste and not smell for days on end. I am a person who is not alone. I am a person who can adapt to change better than I knew I could. I am a person who needed to be needy. I am a person who can’t wait to take a meal to my next friend in need because of how generous my friends were to me. I am a person who has learned what it means to endure the beams of love. I am a person who is living between memory and hope. I am a person who, taste or not, am going to Tandem next week. Twice.